If I Stay Movie Blurb by Shale August 23, 2014 This is a romantic drama that was not entirely liked by most critics and entirely liked by others (41% of the aggregate reviewers on Rottentomatoes.) Some jaded professional movie critics will tell you it is melodramatic and manipulative. So what? I know that about every Twilight movie and yet I can enjoy being manipulated as much as any teen girl. So, I am with the 75% of audiences that liked this movie. And, sorry about the comparison to Twilight, this one has much more depth of characters and some very emotional performances by actors young and old. In fact, when it ended, there was just music and credits rolling up a dark screen and I was grateful for a moment to just sit and think about it in the almost empty matinee theater. Mia (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a junior in high school and a very good cellist (she has been in love with the instrument since childhood). Her parents (Joshua Leonard and Mireille Enos) are a very free lifestyle couple who were also involved in a band until they settled into parenthood and have been supportive of Mia's musical ambitions. Mia is practicing in the music room alone in school when she is approached by Adam (Jamie Blackley) an older, popular senior who has his own garage band and is playing gigs. They hit it off. Adam and Mia - a Couple Early on in the movie, we are introduced to that fateful day - where the whole family is out for a drive in the country and have a head on collision. Mia gets up amid the chaos of wreckage and EMT vehicles and workers and discovers it is her body they are working on. Life Changing Moment She is in shock and doesn't quite realize that she is an out of body remnant of herself. She accompanies her body to the hospital where she goes thru some serious surgery and is hooked to a respirator in the ICU. Mia Running Unseen in Hospital It is from this point that we follow the high and low points of her life in flashbacks. Her growing love and relationship with Adam, her supportive parents as she anxiously waits to see if she is accepted into Julliard and worries how that will impact her and Adam if she moves to NY from the West Coast. It is each of these dramatic vignettes that piece together this story and, which brings out some fine performances of all the actors. We see the different loving moments with her family as well as the loving and sometimes conflicting moments of her teen romance, all seeming quite genuine. Family Dinner From the flashbacks we periodically cut back to the hospital and the current drama going on where Mia's spirit is watching unseen. Her grandfather (Stacy Keach) is believable in the flashback scenes as he takes her to audition with her cello and he has a most dramatic scene at the bedside of his critically injured granddaughter, confessing to her that the decision to stay or go on is entirely hers and he understands it. I would recommend this movie to anyone with a heart.
